The Rev. Skip Baltz, left, joins in
assembling a stained-glass window at the Westin Resort on Tuesday.
The window will grace the section of the Pentagon damaged during the
Sept. 11 attacks.

Chaplains honor Pentagon victims

BY LAURA MARBLE, The Island
PacketPublished Wednesday, March
6th, 2002

Military chaplains clustered around a table at
the Westin Resort on Tuesday, each placing a piece of cut glass inside a
wooden frame. They hope the stained-glass window they were creating
eventually will hang in the Pentagon.

Some of the nearly 400 chaplains who helped assemble the window during
the Senior Leadership Training Conference on Hilton Head Island, which
runs through Thursday, ministered to grieving families of victims of the
Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon.

The stained-glass window will be presented during the conference to the
Army's Office of the Chief of Chaplains at the Pentagon, according to the
window's designer, Dennis Roberts of Fredericksburg, Texas. Officials in
that office then will donate the window to the Pentagon.

The pentagonal-shaped window has an eagle and an American flag in the
center. The Pentagon stands below, with an olive branch symbolizing peace
and good will.

The same design hung behind President Bush when he spoke during a
memorial service at the Pentagon for the victims, Roberts said. Unlike the
memorial service design, however, the window has 184 crimson pieces of
glass that symbolize the loss of lives at the Pentagon.

The Rev. Larry Racster, the reserve adviser to the chief of chaplains,
placed a star-shaped piece of cut glass and a crimson piece in the wooden
frame Tuesday. He's taking two souvenir pieces of glass home with him, one
for a friend and one for himself.

"I'll definitely put mine on my desk," he said. "When I look at it I'll
think of how God allowed me to minister in ways that I couldn't have
imagined."

Racster was alive to minister to families of victims at the Pentagon
because he was at traffic court with his son during the attack, rather
than at his office at the Pentagon, he said.

Racster's friend is alive because he was taking his son to day care
rather than sitting in his cubicle at the Pentagon. Racster said he hoped
the glass piece might open up his friend to talk about co-workers he lost
during the attack.

"He doesn't want to talk about it yet," Racster said. "I think this
might bring some closure for him."